'We needed coffee but...'

From its title, which runs to 101 words in full, to its wordless concrete poems; from its World Cup fixture list to its transformations of four-letter words, 'We needed coffee but...' is audacious, mischievous, even outrageous. As in his award-winning first collection The Book of Matthew, the poet attends precisely to each detail: the rhythms are musical but unexpected; the brightness control on imagery is turned up high. New in this book is the emphasis on collaboration. Some of this work began in text pieces for art exhibitions or as song-cycle lyrics. Other poems respond to the influences of Gertrude Stein, Raymond Queneau, Inger Christensen, dom silvester houedard, Yoko Ono and Gyorgy Ligeti. Matthew Welton turns rigorous control into a dancing display of wit: we become his collaborators in the shared delight that inventive poetry can contrive.

Table of Contents:
Contents 1Virtual airport 2Four-letter words 3Poems retrieved Home economics Got loose and let some Clued in Paul Simon variations If I had a yammer Woven poems Poppy I must say that at first it was difficult work Measure 4South Korea and Japan 2002 5Six poems by themselves 6Dr Suss Acknowledgements Note: ‘I must say that at first it was difficult work’

About the Author :
Matthew Welton's poems take a playful approach to language and often blur the boundaries between poetry and other forms, such as fiction, music and visual art. His three previous Carcanet books are: The Book of Matthew (2003), We needed coffee but we'd got ourselves convinced that the later we left it the better it would taste, and, as the country grew flatter and the roads became quiet and dusk began to colour the sky, you could guess from the way we retuned the radio or unfolded the map and commented on the view that the tang of determination had overtaken our thoughts, and when, fidgety and untalkative but almost home, we drew up outside the all-night restaurant, it felt like we might just stay in the car, listening to the engine and the gentle sound of the wind (2009) and The Number Poems (2016). Matthew Welton was born in Nottingham, lives in Nottingham, and teaches creative writing at the University of Nottingham. Author photo credit: Jack Tinney

Review :
Matthew Welton is prepared to admit that sometimes things need a second, third or even fifteenth look. In his second collection, We needed coffee but...(the full 101-word title is too long to include here) his thoroughness and persistence serves as a reality check on the lazy assumption that things in poems possess an automatic significance which the reader should understand and trust. In the opening twenty-four-parter 'Virtual airport', light is 'like new aluminium' or 'a gesture not everybody is going to understand' or 'a colour like still lemonade' or 'something only dimly understood'. For all the reappraisal and repitition there is no loss of precision, the ideas never fail to be rejuvenated by each look. The overall impression of such a sustained, focussed enquiry can be exhausting, challenging, but the sense of atmosphere accumulated is uniquely vivid, perhaps even more 'real' orhonest for its rigour. 'Four Letter Words' is one of many sequences drawn from collaborations, in this case with the composer Larry Groves. Made-up entirely of words with four letters, it can make for an odd read at times, particularly part 'vier': 'arsm coss jick dism', but elsewhere things are more still and playful: 'Pour yourself some coke. Grab some blue bean soup.' The sequence adjusts the ear so that the sound of each word becomes inseparable from its meaning. Even a word like 'much' becomes distinctly onomatopoeic. Part three, 'Aimed at nobody', features more traditionally singular poems. Its visual art equivalent would be demonstrating that aside from abstract studies Welton can also draw a convincing pair of hands without fingers looking like sausages. These are lively, surreal poems following their own beguiling logic: 'The habit of warming a lightbulb in your hands seriously inflates your heart.' Elsewhere, 'South Korea and Japan 2002' follows the games and stadiums of that year's world cup: 'germicide' plays 'southpaw' in a 'tournament' of vignettes about domesticity, skyline, light and the intimacy. 'Six poems by themselves' is a sequence made entirely from differently arranged horizontal lines (poem blue-prints maybe?) and the final 13-part 'Dr. Suss' grows organically from itself: part repetition/part mutation: 'As slow as winter fog, we set out for our appointment with John Barnes. As slow as winter fog, we missed our appointment with John Cabot...' Welton's book doesn't chum-up to the reader, but it does work very hard. You're unlikely to read anything like it simply because poems are rarely so curious, precise and committed to their enquiry.